SCIENTIFIC CORRESPONDENCE

THE FENNOSCANDIAN SHIELD WITHIN FENNOSCANDIA

JOAKIM DONNER

DONNER, JOAKIM, 1996. The Fennoscandian Shield within Fennoscandia. Bull. Geol. Soc. Finland 68, Part 1, 99-103.

Keywords: nomenclature, Baltic Shield, Fennoscandian Shield, Precambrian, Fennoscandia.

Joakim Donner, Department of Geology, P.O. Box 11, FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland

The Commission for the Geological Map of the World, CGMW, recommended in a resolution at its General Assembly in Kyoto, 24-28 August 1992, "that the name Baltic Shield should be replaced by the name Fennoscandian Shield". This was taken as an international acceptance of the use of this name (Vorma 1993), earlier rec-ommended both by the unofficial Finnish work-ing group of bedrock stratigraphy (Aro 1986, 1988) and by the Geological Survey of Finland (Marttila 1988), and mentioned as an alternative name already by Simonen (1980). The area of the shield with exposed Precambrian rocks, al-though largely covered by a sheet of Quaternary deposits, includes southern Norway, most of Sweden, Finland and in Russia the Kola penin-sula in the north and areas south of the White Sea as far east as beyond Lake Onega. In general tectonic divisions of Europe it has been referred to as representing the Baltic Shield, bounded by the Caledonides (or Caledonian belt) in the northwest and in the east and south by Palaeo-zoic and younger strata of the East European

Platform (Russian Platform), as seen, for in-stance, on the maps presented by Holmes (1944, 1965). It is for this area (Fig. 1), geologically similar to the Canadian Shield, that the name Fennoscandian Shield should, according to the above-mentioned recommendation, be used.

The wish to replace the name Baltic Shield by the the name Fennoscandian Shield stems fore-most from a linguistic confusion, as pointed out by Saltikoff (1992). The name Baltic Shield, as it has been used, refers to the Baltic (Sea), the English name corresponding to Mare balticum in Latin and la Baltique in French, as also to the name in Rus-sian, Baltiiskoye morye. But in German the Baltic Sea, because it is in the east, is called die Ostsee and similarly in Swedish Östersjön. This has been translated into Finnish (Itämeri), whereas in Esto-nia the western situation of the Baltic is reflected in its name Läänemeri. But in spite of these names for the Baltic, the name for the Baltic Shield has been translated into Baltiska skölden in Swedish and Baltian kilpi in Finnish. This has led to the misconception that the name Baltic Shield refers

100 Joakim Donner

Figure 1. The Fennoscandian Shield (Baltic Shield) compared with the larger area of Fennoscandia, as defined by Ramsay.

to the area of the three states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania southeast of the Baltic, in the Early Mid-dle Ages inhabited by the Baltic tribes and now referred to as the Baltic states, which all three lie outside the area of the exposed Precambrian shield. Seen against this background the wish to use the name Fennoscandian Shield is understandable,

even if it in English is not necessarily better than the name Baltic Shield (Saltikoff 1992). If the lat-ter name had originally been correctly translated from the name of the Baltic Sea into Swedish and Finnish the confusion with the names would have been avoided, as pointed out by Saltikoff.

The Fennoscandian Shield within Fennoscandia 101

Figure 2. Wilhelm Ramsay (standing) at the age of 22 on the Kola peninsula expedition in 1887. Sitting on the left A.O. Kihlman (Kairamo) and on the right J. A. Palmén (courtesy Franciska Sundholm).

By accepting the use of the name Fennos-candian Shield instead of the name Baltic Shield another possibility of confusion is, however, intro-duced, because the area of the Fennoscandian Shield is different from the geographical area of Fennoscandia as originally suggested by Ramsay (1898) and later generally used. In his study of the Quaternary of the Kola peninsula, at the time when Finland was a Grand Duchy of the Russian Em-pire, Ramsay (Fig. 2) pointed out that the Kola peninsula, together with Norway, Sweden, Fin-land, Russian Karelia and the Onega area, includ-ing the northen part of the then province of Olonetz and the western part of that of Archangel, consti-tute a physico-geographical area sharply differing

from its surrounding. As the southeastern bound-ary, however, is difficult to trace geologically, Kulikov (1995) suggested that the boundary here should be drawn on the basis of rivers, lakes, wa-tersheds and other distinct natural features. This boundary suggested by Kulikov is outside that sug-gested by Ramsay, which has generally been used. In its western part Fennoscandia includes, accord-ing to the suggestion by Ramsay, the Caledonides of Norway as well as Scania in southernmost Swe-den (Fig. 1). In this study of the Kola peninsula Ramsay (1898), in introducing the name Fennos-candia, stressed the similarities of the Quaternary features on the Kola peninsula with those in other parts of Fennoscandia, but as a concept the name,

102 Joakim Donner

as seen, refers to a clearly defined geographical area.

The reason why Ramsay suggested the name Fennoscandia was that there was not a suitable name for this area; northern Europe comprises a bigger area and, furthermore, what is interesting to note here, the name Baltic Shield excludes the Palaeozoic mountains and Scania. Fennoscandia is, as pointed out by Ramsay, also identical with the Scandinavian-Finnish biogeographical area used by botanists and zoologists, as well as an area for long foremost inhabited by Scandinavian and Finnish people. Ramsay's argument was in keep-ing with the national romantic movement, Kare-lianism, that affected many of the Finnish painters at the end of the last century (Smith 1970).

In spite of the clear definition of the name Fen-noscandia by Ramsay in his original paper (see also Ramsay 1931), Sederholm (1932) unfortu-nately misleadingly, by writing about the geology of Fennoscandia, stated, without giving any refer-ences, that "it was earlier often called the Baltic Shield, but Fennoscandia, proposed by Wilhelm Ramsay, seems far the better name". This state-ment was unfortunately later quoted in favour of the use of the name Fennoscandian Shield instead of the name Baltic Shield (Marttila 1988). A cer-tain confusion between the name Fennoscandia and the Baltic Shield is also reflected in the discus-sion of the geological and morphological features by Tanner (1938) who, however, did not quote the

original paper by Ramsay (1898) in which Fennos-candia was defined.

From the discussion above it follows that the area of the Fennoscandian Shield, the name rec-ommended instead of the name Baltic Shield, is part of the area defined as Fennoscandia (Fig. 1). In general geological texts published outside Fin-land this distinction seems to be accepted. In Swe-den the name Fennoscandian Shield was already used by Lundqvist (1976) and Hjort and Sundquist (1979), whereas Fennoscandia in its correct mean-ing was used, for instance, by Nilsson (1983) and in Norway by Holtedahl (1953), who referred to the Precambrian rocks as being part of the large east-Fennoscandian shield area. In Denmark Han-sen (1965), in discussing the bedrock of Bornholm, mentioned the Fennoscandian Shield in the north-west. In general geological textbooks, as in the earlier mentioned book by Holmes (1965), Fen-noscandia is mentioned as a geographical area, in accordance with the original definition by Ramsay. There has thus been an awareness of the difference between the Fennoscandian Shield and Fennos-candia for some time, well before the use of the name Fennoscandian Shield was recommended in 1992.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The author is grateful to Professor Franciska Sundholm for pro-viding the photograph of Wilhelm Ramsay for publication, and to Ms Tuija Jantunen, Phil, lic., for drawing the map.

The Fennoscandian Shield within Fennoscandia 103

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